


Little Bird

by GirlInterrupted36



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Children of Characters, Crimson Flower Spoilers, Edelgard's daughter, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Harm to Children, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Surprise Ending, Trauma, crests, crests lore, dual crests, lore expanded, post Crimson Flower future, romantic but not, slight AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:40:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 20,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24934672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GirlInterrupted36/pseuds/GirlInterrupted36
Summary: Edelgard's daughter, Caladria, has grown up knowing that she would someday assume control of the Adrestrian Empire. But the more she learns about her mother and the past, the more she begins to doubt her assigned future--until she isn't sure what she believes anymore. Should she follow her mother's dream to destroy crests and the Church? Who is her father? What happened to him? And how far will Caladria go to find out who she really is?
Relationships: Bernadetta and Caladria (OC), Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Edelgard von Hresvelg, Edelgard and Child (OC), Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth, Flayn & Seteth (Fire Emblem), Seteth and Caladria (OC)
Comments: 43
Kudos: 34





	1. Little Bird

**Author's Note:**

> This is my vision, with some slight additions, of the Crimson Flower and post-Crimson Flower world.

Year: 1194

The little bird. Her hair was white blonde, like her mother’s. She had no idea what her father had looked like, having never known him, but she imagined him tall, maybe blonde. Loving. The kind of person she wished she always imagined she had grown up with. Caladria stared at her reflection in the mirror, hating the reflection that met her there, that picture of her mother. She tore a hairbrush through her shimmering strands so abruptly it slapped the shoulder pads of her uniform at the bottom of each stroke. One pull. Two. 98 to go. 

Her mother entered and hovered behind Caladria’s stool, a purple ribbon in her hands. Edelgard von Hresvelg. Leader of the Black Eagle Strike Force and Empress of Adrestian Empire, Edelgard left very big shoes to fill. Shoes Caladria feigned an interest in where she lacked real feelings. 

“21. 22.” Caladria skipped ahead in brush strokes, already tired and missing the braids she’d had before her mother stripped them away. They had to match, and her mother did not like braids. 

Edelgard realized her daughter’s deception immediately, her hand closing around her daughter’s on the brush. “We start again, Little Bird.” Her tone was not one of anger, but of disappointment. The worst tone. When Caladria did not immediately respond, her mother’s hand tightened enough that her fingernails left indentations in Caladria’s skin. “We start again.” Edelgard had never liked to repeat herself. 

Caladria closed her eyes. Already at thirteen years old, she knew she was supposed to obey even when her heart didn’t believe in her actions. “One,” she whispered. “Two.” She counted out loud all the way to 100, and then sat quietly while Edelgard fastened her hair into a light ponytail at the nape of her neck. Just once, she’d like to follow her heart and see where it led. Just once. 

“Good girl.”

Caladria had lived for those words for many years, or any words like them. Her mother’s approval. But then she had seen things. Seen who her mother really was. Now she yearned for more than that. Better than that. “Mother?” It was against her best judgment, but she had to ask.

“Yes, Caladria?” Edelgard turned to put the hairbrush away in a nightstand drawer and returned with a small jar of gel to slick back Caladria’s unruly bangs, the only real difference between them.

“Who was my father?”

Edelgard was silent for a moment before uttering, “We do not discuss him.” 

“Why?” Caladria knew that she was pushing things, but she had to push, with what was coming. 

“You already know why.” Edelgard crossed to the window and stared out at the square below where her followers were making preparations for the day’s events. Caladria stared dead at her mother’s back, waiting for some sign that Edelgard was going to continue to speak. But there was none. And then: “Today is a very important day.”

“I know, Mother.” Caladria turned to stare at her hated reflection once more, and pushed a single rebellious blonde strand behind her left ear. “I am ready for my destiny.” And she was. The words were true. She just needed to decide what that destiny was.

“The role of heiress apparent comes with much responsibility. You will carry on my legacy when I am gone--with the smothering of the Church of Seiros, we must continue to wage war against those who sliver in the dark. And when I am gone, Caladria, you will be the hope of our people that drives that battle forward.” 

“Because of what they did to you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Because of what they did to all of us. The crests, the experiments, the blurring of the lines between the church and the darkness. All of it.”

“These crests I bear…” Caladria began. She had two. She knew not many did and that the fact that she was one of the few made her special. Her mother had tried to have the crests removed when she was only six, a long and trying experiment that left Caladria weak and sick for many moons. There was no removing crests, still, even after all this time. She only knew of one person in her mother’s reign who had once carried a crest but no longer did, and she was not sure that woman was an ally. Time would tell. “Was it really so important to remove them?”

“My crests are responsible for the darkness in my life at every single turn. I wanted to avoid that darkness polluting your life as well, but I suppose that was a childish wish.” Edelgard turned away from the window, away from the setup of the thrones, and pulled a small crown and a dagger from under her armor. “I wore this crown. When I was made to be heiress apparent. It was a stunning day, my father presenting me in front of the entire Empire. I knew then what I was meant to do. The work that I would begin.”

“To end the Church of Seiros.”

“They deserved everything that they received.” 

Caladria turned back to the mirror as her mother placed the crown on her head, its ends embedded within the tied back strands. “And what of today?”

“What of it?” Edelgard fiddled with her daughter’s hair around the crown before meeting her gaze in the mirror.

“This man we will hang today. What is his crime?”

Edelgard’s gaze held Caladria’s steady in the mirror. “He gave hope to the Church,” she replied simply. After a few moments she added, “And all those souls the Church filled with crests. Those broken people they never should have…” Her voice trailed off. “Now that I have him and his so-called sister in my clutches, I will make an example of them. The final traitors to the Empire, the remains of a dying breed.”

“Do we need to go that far?”

A knock sounded against the bedroom door before Edelgard could answer. “Enter,” Caladria said by way of permission.

The door opened and Byleth appeared, draped in full regalia of the Empire. “They are ready for you.”

Caladria had known Byleth her entire life. From the stories, she knew that Byleth had been the first one to hold her after her birth. But that didn’t make her trust Byleth any more. When she needed an ally, would the older woman be there for her?

“Thank you, my teacher.” Edelgard had referred to Byleth as my teacher for as long as Caladria could remember, referencing the time they had spent together at the monastery. 

With no further utterances, Byleth departed as quickly as she had appeared. 

“Caladria,” Edelgard said coldly, “we must do what we have to do in order to succeed at our goals.”

Caladria stared at herself in the mirror, wearing a crown that represented ideals she wasn’t sure she carried. “Mother? This dagger. Where did it come from?”

Edelgard gently traced the hilt of the dagger with her fingers before saying, “It was a gift. When I was a young girl, maybe ten. The boy I loved then gave it to me.”

“Do you love him still?”

Her mother’s eyes flashed in the reflection before she turned away to look out the window once again. “He was a necessary sacrifice. His beliefs and mine did not align. I could never love anyone who sided with the Church.” Her tone was cold, distant. Had she loved the boy once, it was clear she had removed that piece of herself from her heart. 

“Was he…” Caladria’s voice shook slightly, but she pressed on, determined. “Was he my father?”

“He…” Edelgard didn’t turn around, but whispered, “was. And the dagger is yours now, so that you can have a piece of him. The only piece I have to give.” 

Caladria’s fingers closed around the dagger as she pulled it into her lap against the light plate of her armor and considered what it meant. 

“This man we hang today, this last vestige of the Church of Seiros, signifies the beginning of an even better era. We are removing the last knowledge of the crests and their power from existence. We are erasing history.”

History. The last ties to an age where her father had thrived. With those ties gone, she would never know him. Never know what might have been. “But we have to kill for that?”

“To protect those we love? Certainly. Whatever it takes to have our freedom.”

Caladria twisted her mother’s words around in her head. Killing...for freedom? She didn’t want to kill innocents, and she didn’t want to rule an empire that would force her to become that person. Force her to become her mother. Caladria wanted more--more than the Empire. She wanted to be better. She wanted her father.

“For my father,” Caladria’s words echoed her thoughts, her fingers clutched around the dagger as she drove it into the seam of Edelgard’s armor below her throat. The little bird had done what so many before her had failed to do. Her mother had no time for final words, was on the ground with her hands around her throat, silent as she fell. Silent as the crimson blood streamed out and spread across the wood paneled flooring like a flower. 

She had to stop the hanging.


	2. Emotions

Year 1180

Edelgard sat at her desk in the dormitory, lost in thought. It had been one week since, as the Flame Emperor, she had met with Kostas and his men. And in just a few short hours, she would embark into the forest on a supposed camping trip with Claude and Dimitri. Claude and Dimitri would be murdered by the thieves, and Edelgard’s hands would be clean as her plan to dismantle the Church went into motion. It was her first move in what she knew would be a lengthy game of chess.

“We should train our magic. In the forest.”

She turned to the door to see Dimitri standing there, stiff and formal, his obnoxious boyish bangs obscuring his blue eyes. “Could you knock?”

He didn’t apologize. “When we camp,” was all he said.

“I know what you meant. Kindly step out of my bedroom.” Edelgard rose and took a step forward, forcing Dimitri back from the doorway. “What would people think of us? If they were to see?”

“I assure you, I had intentions only of discussing training this time. Nothing more.”

“If we are going to train, I must train with the axe. Claude the bow. And you the lance. Hone our best qualities.” Edelgard could use magic, if she wanted. She could do anything she wanted. But she preferred the heft of a weapon in her hands, and she knew Dimitri did too. They had trained together for many moons.

“I don’t like that there are areas where I’m weak.”

Edelgard stepped out to the railing, peering down at the greenhouse below. When she placed her hands on the black metal, Dimitri’s right made its way over her left. She did not pull away. “You think it makes you weak? I would go so far as to say our focus, our drive, in specific areas, makes us stronger than the average. More.”

“And I would say,” he added, as his fingers found their way between hers, “that it would make us even stronger to be well rounded.”

“I wouldn’t say you were weak,” she told him quietly. But then, coming back to herself, she tacked on a, “Weaker than me, maybe. But certainly not weak.”

“Why, Edelgard, is that a challenge? We both know who the victor would be.” Dimitri’s blue eyes danced in the low light as he teased her.

“Me, of course.” She didn’t know how to lose. She never had. And that was her real weakness.

He changed the topic abruptly. “We should talk. About what happened last night.” So that was why he had really come.

Edelgard did not want to discuss that. She hadn’t set out to have sex with him. She only knew that she had looked into his eyes and had to know her feelings for him were not as important as her overall mission. That she could love him, have sex with him, and then walk away. Let him go. She answered simply, “Last night was last night. And today is today.”

“Was it…okay?” His words dripped with a quality Edelgard had rarely heard, a nervous edge that revealed a brief glimpse of how young he still was.

It had been. Okay. More than okay. She had to prove to herself that she was more than her emotions, that her feelings for Dimitri were not as important as her overall mission. That she could take them, experience them, corral them, and then put them away.It was ironic, really, that their sexual encounter was her working on a weakness, training her way out of feeling the way he wanted to train his way into magic. She had a choice then, of the words she would say. Cater to his heart, or push him further still away. “It was…what it was.”

“I don’t even know how to take that.”

“This discussion is futile.” Edelgard tried to pull her hand away, but Dimitri wouldn’t budge. He had a way of always forcing her to face what she was truly feeling.

“Having a training meeting without me?” Claude lazily draped himself across the railing on Edelgard’s other side, a welcome interruption. Unlike his friend though, he made no move to take her hand. And she no move for his.

Dimitri slowly moved his hand back into his own space, but they both knew Claude had seen their touching even if pretended not to. He’d seen, like he saw everything deeply, but he wouldn’t comment. He would save the knowledge for when it would be beneficial strategically. It was good then, that he would be gone soon. That both boys would be gone soon. It was almost sad that they would never get to grow up, that their destinies were only to further her agenda.

“We should get ready to go.” Edelgard turned back into her room, towards her bag, her weapons.

“Aye, my lady.” A glance over her shoulder revealed Claude dipping into a nerdy half-bow, his bag already clutched over his shoulder. They parted, gathering their things before heading down the stairs to the gates of the monastery. Claude was in the lead as he loped forward, vanishing into the trees that separated the monastery from Remire Village.

Edelgard felt a moment of guilt knowing what was coming as Dimitri’s hand closed around hers and they plunged after Claude into the forest. But only a moment. She was training away her weakness, just as Dimitri had said. He would never know how much he had helped her.

_Whatever it takes to have my freedom._

When the bandits stepped out of the trees, weapons drawn, she pretended to be surprised. And when Dimitri stepped in front of her, she closed her heart to what she knew it felt. There was only the mission. Nothing else.


	3. The Dagger Returns

Year: 1194

Caladria sat down on her bed, her mother’s body at her feet and covered by the red black and quilt she normally slept with. She didn’t cry. Was it a rash choice? To kill? Maybe. Was it necessary, this time? Absolutely. Thinking back to everything that had happened in her thirteen years, all the things her mother had done both to her and to their people, Caladria had no regrets beyond wishing she’d had a normal mother. She fought the urge to tear out the crown Edelgard had so carefully placed in her hair and toss it in the blood. 

A rapid knock sounded on the door. “It’s time, ladies.”

Byleth. Crap. “C-coming!” Caladria stepped gingerly over the body, careful not to track her shoes in the blood. She opened the door a smidge and slipped out while pulling it back shut behind herself so Byleth wouldn’t see. 

“Where is Edelgard?” Byleth looked curiously at the already shut door.

“She went on ahead already.” The lie left Caladria’s lips a little too easily.

Byleth steered her down the path with a light hand on her shoulder. “Surprising that she’d go without you.”

Caladria worked to hold her expression neutral as she scrambled for a comeback. All of her lessons at hiding her emotions were finally paying off. “She wanted to check on the gallows herself.” That seemed like something Edelgard would do. “Make sure everything was perfect for the ceremony.”

“I oversaw it myself. I wish she’d trust me more.” Byleth’s hand disappeared from Caladria’s shoulder and she walked slightly ahead of the younger girl, clearly flummoxed. 

It was a five minute walk to the room where Caladria would wait for the ceremony, and she said nothing else enroute. She had never been much by way of a conversationalist, especially with Byleth. It seemed sometimes like the older woman had no feelings, and Caladria never knew how to respond to that. Caladria perched in a waiting chair as Byleth assessed the assembled crowd. 

“Everyone has come. I don’t see your mother though.”

“She must be there somewhere.”

Byleth’s eyes drifted to the clock. 

“Do you know him?” Caladria asked, diverting the conversation from her mother.

“Know who?” Byleth turned to face her, her expression a mask of impatience.

“The man we’re hanging today.” Caladria searched back in her memory. Her mother had said the name at some point. “Seteth?”

“I do. Did.” Byleth didn’t elaborate, and Caladria didn’t ask anymore questions. 

Caladria watched the minutes go by on the wall clock while she pondered the best way to set Seteth free. In mere minutes, she would become heiress apparent in a supposedly elegant ceremony that culminated with the hanging as her first official act. She turned over her hastily formed plan in her mind. There was a door down to the cell behind the bookcase in this very room, the lever hidden behind the fourth book from the left on the third shelf. There would be one guard at the cell, maybe two. And she would…

“I’m going to find Edelgard so that we can begin.” Byleth’s tone was clipped and impatient as the clock went five minutes past the time they were supposed to begin. 

As Byleth slipped out the door, Caladria knew that she had perhaps five minutes to do what she needed to do. Going to the indicated bookcase, she pulled the lever to shift things to the side and slipped into the gap and down the dark stairs. The cell below was guarded by a single man with an axe strapped to his back. 

“Good day,” said the guard, and then noticing who she was, dipped into a quick bow. “You didn’t have to come down, my lady; I would have brought him to you when it was time.”

Caladria tried to channel her inner Edelgard. “I think it would appear better if I were to escort him myself, wouldn’t you agree?”

The guard sputtered. “You’re just—“ 

“I am not a little girl,” Caladria cut him off. 

From the darkness, she heard what sounded like a cross between a scoff and a snort. “You certainly look little,” came the voice of the man she was to hang.

“I think I should stay and escort you,” the guard insisted, stepping between her and the bars.

Caladria drew herself up as tall as she could. “I think that you should give me the keys and go.” With a deep breath, she amended that to, “I ORDER you to give me the keys and go.”

“Okay,” the guard drew out the sound of the vowels as he passed her the key ring. “I will…wait upstairs.”

“You will do no such thing.” She snatched the keyring and turned to the cell, effectively ending the conversation. When she heard the door above slide shut, she leaned into the cell just as the man spit at her feet.

“Heretic,” the unseen man cursed as he spit a second time.

Caladria took a step back, lest the spit strike her too. “Listen,” she began.

“I neither want nor need to hear anything that you have to say.” He had long green hair, matted and covered in dirt from the cell, and his eyes flashed with a hatred unlike any Caladria had ever seen. 

She held up the keys, “You have no reason to believe me, but I’ve come to let you go.”

Seteth stepped back from the bars, his eyes narrowed. “You would do no such thing.” He retreated to the corner of the cell, but his gaze remained locked on hers. 

Exasperated, Caladria shoved the keys in the lock and yanked the door open. “We don’t have time for this. We have to go.” When Seteth didn’t move, she stepped back and said again, “We have to GO.”

He shook his head in confusion. “I…Why would you do this? You have no reason to let me go.”

“I want you to take me with you,” she said quietly.

“Are you…What is the reason for this?”

“You knew my father, back then.”

“I…did.” The man’s eyes told her facts that she couldn’t quite name. 

“And I would like to know more about him, so this arrangement benefits us both.” She pulled the door all the way open. “Do you want to stay here, or do you want to hang?” she asked with a small tap of her foot against the bars. 

He took a step forward towards the gap, looking right and left with mild suspicion. 

Caladria huffed slightly, looking over her should at the dark staircase. “We NEED to get out of here,” she told him again. “Before someone comes for us. I could…take my dagger.” She fumbled under her cloak before realizing she had left the dagger behind. “I—“

“It’s okay.” Seteth held out a placating hand as he finally emerged from the cell. “We can go.”

With that, they made their way into the dark stairwell. When they reached the top and slid open the door, they came face to face with Byleth, her hand clutched around the bloody dagger. 

  
  



	4. Dimitri's "Death"

Year: 1186

“Edelgard! You! I will kill you!” Dimitri’s voice could barely contain his rage as he stared down the woman he had once thought he loved on a battlefield near the end of the war. Soon all would be lost, and it was he who stood between Edelgard and victory. Only he could stop her. “You will know the regret of my father, who was killed for you! Of my stepmother, who was slain by her own daughter! You will bow your head before all the lives you trampled for your ideals before you die in misery!”

“Your obsession with me is appalling. If you were a normal human, you would most certainly have died already. Farewell, King of Delusion. If only we were born in a time of peace, you might have lived a joyful life as a benevolent ruler.” Edelgard raised her axe high and slammed it into Dimitri’s shoulder.

Dimitri leaned forward drowning out the cries of his comrades in the background as he clutched the wound and whispered, “Even your feelings, El? Because that barely hurt at all. It’s not even a scratch.” He ignored the blood seeping between his fingers. He knew exactly where to hit her, how to make it hurt. “I loved you, El. More than anyone.”

She raised the axe again, her eyes dark. “I never loved you.” The words were insistent, but her eyes told a different story. “You…You believe that I am the cause of everything. You lost sight of your path and what it means to be king. In doing this, I’m saving you. From a future you don’t want.”

“That’s a lie. All of it.” He coughed as move blood seeped between his fingers, too much blood to stop. He had wanted so badly to reason with her, in the end, for his death to mean something, perhaps be the catalyst that helped her. But he couldn’t when she wouldn’t be helped. His hand reached for a spear that was no longer there, driven to finish her before she could finish him.

“You live in a prison of revenge and you’ve lost sight of the real evil, Dimitri. And now, I set you free.” The axe came down again, and this time Dimitri did not rise. Couldn’t rise.

He had the satisfaction of hearing a small noise from Edelgard’s lips as he closed his eyes. And then pain. Glaring. The tip of a sharp object in his eye. Then nothing at all.

*

The next sound he heard was a vaguely familiar voice.

“Can you help him?” A man’s voice.

“I…I am not sure, Father. This might be more than even my magic is capable of.” A younger girl.

Dimitri tried to force his eyes open but they wouldn’t budge. What was happening? Where was he?

“Oh no,” the girl said as he groaned, “please do not move.”

A hand on his shoulder, and then more darkness.

*

The light was bright. When Dimitri blinked slowly, he realized it was only with his left eye. The right remained shrouded in darkness.

“You are awake?” The girl.

He turned his head slightly. Big round eyes. Green hair. “Flayn.” His voice came out dry, unused for some unknown amount of time. “Where…”

“Let me fetch some water.” She left and returned in mere seconds, gently lifting a cup to his lips. “Here. Slowly.”

“Where am I? What has happened to my eye?” A beat, and then more questions spilled from his mouth. “We thought that you and your brother had perished? What is this place? Is this…”

Flayn slid a pillow behind Dimitri’s back as he struggled to sit up. “Yes. This is Garrag Mach. What is left of it after the Black Eagle Strike force decimated it. F-Brother is here too.”

“We all thought you both dead.” Dimitri’s head swum as he tried to absorb everything around him.

“We are hardy,” Flayn answered. “Do you remember the battle?”

He did, vaguely. Edelgard and her harsh words, her axe swinging down. Blood. “I believe so.”

“Edelgard cut you through and left you for dead. And as the combat moved on, we were able to attend to you and get you out.”

She offered him the cup of water, and he gratefully accepted it in his slightly shaky hands.

“We have spent the past several weeks bringing you back to health.”

“Flayn is a very talented healer.”

Dimitri looked up at the interjection to find Seteth standing in the doorway. “Seteth.” His hands shook more, and Flayn reached out to retrieve the water glass before it could tumble to the floor. “I am so glad that you both made it out alive.”

“And we are glad to see you awake and alert.” Seteth stood at the edge of the room as Flayn retrieved a small towel and basin to begin the process of changing Dimitri’s wound dressings.

“How…bad are things?” Dimitri asked, slightly afraid to hear the answer. “The wounds.” He traced up his cheek with his finger to feel the start of an eyepatch over his darkened eye. “My eye?” Nothing could be felt under the patch except a disturbing softness.

“She took it. She cut it out in front of everyone and boasted it as a trophy.” Flayn’s face turned nearly as green as her hair.

“Hoisted it up for everyone to see.” Seteth’s words were so sharp they sent spittle flying. “Had we been able to help…but we arrived too late. It was all we could do to save you.”

“And I thank you for that. But when can I get back to the fight?”

Seteth and Flayn looked at each other and then back at Dimitri. “The war is over,” Flayn told him, a tone almost akin to shame littering her words. “The Kingdom has fallen, Rhea has fallen. The Church is nearly decimated.”

“Your people think you dead,” Seteth added quietly. “Everybody does. But that could play to our advantage.”

“How do you mean?” Dimitri felt his good eye closing. The weight of the conversation had sapped what little strength he had.

“There is a resistance. _We_ are the resistance.”


	5. Into the Unknown

Year: 1194

Caladria ground to a halt at the top of the stairs so quickly that Seteth slammed into her from behind. The sight of Byleth clutching the dagger in her bloody palm was not completely unexpected, though surprising all the same. Caladria held her breath as the older woman locked eyes with her, knowing that Byleth was faster and more agile and could mow her down where she stood.

Byleth looked from Caladria to Seteth and then back again. “Seteth.” It wasn’t a question. The dagger hovered in midair between them. “You…?”

“She had to be stopped.” Caladria drew the woman’s attention back to her. “I did what needed to be done.”

Seteth moved to step around Caladria, but Byleth thrust the dagger forward. “Stay back.”

His hands slowly raised into the air as he complied with the order.

“You killed your mother.” The dagger drifted down to Byleth’s side as she sank back on her heels.

Seteth gasped before Caladria could reply. “Edelgard has fallen?!”

“I would not believe it had I not seen it with my own eyes.”

The sadness in Byleth’s eyes dragged an apology to Caladria’s lips, but she clenched her teeth and held it back. She wasn’t sorry. Not in the slightest. Like she’d said, it had to be done. “After everything that my mother did to me—“

“You did the thing I could never find the strength to do.” Byleth wiped the dagger on her cloak and then turned it around to offer it to Caladria, handle first.

Caladria took the dagger uncertainly and sheathed it in her belt. Byleth seemed a touch sad, but not angry as Caladria had expected. Caladria wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Will you let us go then?” Seteth asked.

“I will not stop you.” Byleth sank onto the bench to the side of the door, the weight of her loss heavy.

“I…” Caladria started, eyes to the ground, unsure how to continue.

“Everything that Edelgard did to you. To this country. I came here with her because I thought that I could change her, but I never could. And when you were a young child…the attempts to remove your crests…I became certain that there was no saving Edelgard, not then, not when the way she loved was…” Byleth’s gaze hardened. “You are right that you did what needed to be done, and I am proud of you.”

Caladria was silent. The words were none of what she had expected.

“Seteth,” Byleth continued, “will you take Caladria away from here?”

“I cannot guarantee her safety.”

Caladria noticed his eyes were nearly black with hatred as he stared down at Byleth, and she found she didn’t want to know what had gone on between them to inspire that rage.

“She is innocent in all of this. A passive participant in a war she never truly chose to be a part of. And I believe she will be the catalyst to inspire true change, if only given a chance at freedom from this place. A chance I cannot give her. But you can, Seteth. You can do for her what I never could.” Byleth rose to her feet. “Please don’t make me beg.”

Caladria had never known Byleth to have any real feelings or emotions but she suddenly saw everything the woman felt for her out in the open, on her sleeve, as the expression went. Where Edelgard had never been a true mother, Caladria suddenly realized that Byleth had always been there, in background. Keeping watch. Every time Edelgard struck her, spoke down to her, even during the experiments on her crest, Byleth had been there to hold her mother back. And she felt grateful for that. Stepping forward tentatively, she embraced the older woman before she could back away. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

“I do not know if I can trust this.” Seteth said as the women separated. “I do not know how you can expect that of me.”

“She is a child, Seteth,” Byleth retorted.

“A child who killed her mother.”

Caladria fumbled at her belt and then offered Seteth the dagger she had tucked there. “You can take this. I have no need for it.”

With a shake of his head to remove the hair from his eyes, Seteth begrudgingly accepted the dagger. To Byleth he said, “I will do my best to get her out of here.”

“Thank you,” Byleth told him.

Caladria looked behind Byleth nervously, focused on the door. “We should get going, if we are going to go.”

Byleth went to the door and opened it. The buzz of the impatient crowd from below drifted into the room, and Byleth nudged the door mostly closed again. “I think that your best chance of escape will come if I return to your room and alert the guard that the Empress has fallen.”

“Do you think that’s wise?’ Caladria tried to peer around a curtain out the window, but the crowd was too large to see exactly where the guard was.

“If I draw the guard in that direction, it will also agitate the crowd, which will allow you both the possibility of the escape in the opposite direction during the chaos.”

“This seems to be the wisest course of action.” Seteth gestured to the door. “Let us make haste.”

“Are you ready?” Byleth asked Caladria.

“I am ready.” Caladria said what was expected, even if she wasn’t sure. She was about to leave everything she had ever known, but her only hope was that there was something better out there, something she could use to make change.

Byleth slipped out of the room, and Caladria and Seteth waited by the slightly cracked door in absolute silence. Caladria prayed that no one would come to the waiting room in search of them as the first minute ticked by, and then the next, and the next.

And then a scream.

Byleth had LUNGS. It was piercing in a way Caladria had never heard before, immediately silencing the crowd. The path was suddenly flooded with guard, and she hastily drew back behind the door. As the cries sounded that the Empress had fallen, she turned to look at Seteth. “Shall we do this?”

“Stay behind me,” he commanded. “I have the dagger, and I’ll do my best to protect you.”

Caladria nodded, and the pair plunged rapidly out the door onto the path, and then minutes later into the forest beyond. They were almost far enough away that Caladria could breathe again, when a crunch sounded from somewhere off to their left. A path of light cut through the trees.

“Halt!” a voice commanded. A man spilled out of the foliage, the same guard who had earlier guarded the cell. “Prisoner!”

The man was on top of Seteth before Caladria had time to process what was happening. Seteth fumbled with the dagger as the arm holding it was pinned beneath the larger guard’s bulk. The idea came to Caladria to flee, but she knew she’d get nowhere on her own, weaponless and knowledge-less. She sprang in behind the guard and chopped him in the temple with the heel of her hand as she had learned in training. He fell silently, but he would wake.

Seteth rose, brushing himself off. “Thank you.” He looked her up and down, almost an appraisal, and then said, “Time to take our leave before others appear.”

Caladria followed him quietly into the unknown.


	6. Responsibility

Year: 1186

“I don’t know what the future holds, but..come what may, will you stay by my side? You chose to protect me at the Holy Tomb. Will you choose me again?” Edelgard looked at her feet, clearly unsure of how to continue. “What I’m trying to say is,” she stumbled, “I need you.”

Byleth stared at the girl, not much younger than herself, and felt something deeper than love. She knew how hard it had to be, to say those words. To admit that need. Responsibility. That was the feeling. She felt responsible for this rash, angry, but also sometimes kind, girl, a girl who had once been her student but was now an Empress—responsible to guard her heart and teach her the feelings she herself was only just beginning to learn. No one really saw that kind side of Edelgard apart from Byleth. If Byleth had seen anything in the battle that ended the war, it was that Edelgard had closed herself off from her heart in her efforts to expunge the Church of Seiros from existence. And so, Byleth would prove to the girl that she was in things for the long haul. “El…Please accept this gift.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her father’s ring. It was a physical offering, the only she had to give.

Edelgard’s face flushed a deep crimson as she took in the ring and what it meant. “You called me El. That’s…I…That means more than I can say. And this ring…it’s lovely. Thank you my dearest friend. I will happily accept it.”

The pair stood together at the top of the tower, and Byleth vowed that, despite Edelgard’s arguments, she would take on the girl’s burdens as her own and help her to restore peace and order to Fódlan. It was, after all, part of being a friend, a mentor, a maybe lover. She would share the girl’s pain, and she would teach the girl to accept the happiness she had found.

“To think that I may truly call you my partner and equal now…”

Did Edelgard mean that? Her equal. Byleth’s heart was flooded with hope that they truly could change the world, together. That things would be better than they had been. That she would live up to the teacher Edelgard needed her to be.

“The solitary reign of Edelgard has come to an end,” the girl vowed. “From now on, we walk this path together. With time and care, the darkness shrouding this world will be lifted. You and I will become the light that shine over Fódlan…just as you have shined upon my life.”

The women stood together, staring out over the country from the top of their tower. Byleth reached over and laid a hand gently on Edelgard’s shoulder. It would be a new beginning, a life more focused on growth and love than on revenge and hate. Byleth knew she could, and would, be the one to help Edelgard change—but she also knew that Edelgard had to want it.

*

Edelgard was sitting at her desk when Byleth entered during the next moon, a quill clutched in her hand but floating in midair, as if she meant to put it to paper but had frozen. She made no move to acknowledge Byleth’s entrance. Byleth crossed the room to stand at the edge of the next, noting a single tear on Edelgard’s cheek in the dim lantern light. She had never seen the younger girl cry before; she hadn’t known Edelgard had it in her.

“El?” Her hand grazed the girl’s shoulder but received no response. “What has happened?” Looking down, Byleth took in the letter on the table with the salutation ‘My dearest teacher,’ and frowned deeply. With a confused blink, she asked, “Did you need to speak to me?”

Edelgard’s brow knit together as she wiped the emotions from her countenance. “I…I did not have the courage, my teacher. I do have something that I need to say, but I thought that if I could just write it down…” Her voice trailed off.

“You…” Byleth prodded.

“The words seemed too real when I tried to write them. The idea of seeing them there, permanent…I never knew how to tell you.”

Byleth gently placed her hand over Edelgard’s on the desk. “If you share them with me, I can help shoulder the burden.” It was her duty.

Edelgard turned slightly in her chair. Byleth took in her eyes knit with worry and then the picked skin around her thumb. She had never known Edelgard to fear, well, anything—and Byleth saw everything. The behavior was so uncharacteristic that Byleth took a step back and sank into the chair opposite as Edelgard told her, “I made a terrible mistake, my teacher.”

Byleth bit down hard on the inside of her lip. Though they had not been together long, Byleth had genuinely thought she could help Edelgard, change her somehow. “What have you done?” She fought to keep her tone gentle, to keep the bitter anger from her voice. She wasn’t angry at Edelgard, so much as at herself for failing to steer the girl from whatever she had done.

Edelgard pushed forward the paper she had been writing on. “None of the things I have to say are easy things to say.”

_“My dearest teacher. Over four years ago, at the beginning of the war, I found out that I was with child. It wasn’t something I wanted, or tried for, or expected. A world ruled by the Church and crests was not a world I wanted to bring a child into. I told no one then, sans a single nurse. We slipped away when it was time, and I had the child. And then the nurse took her away. Brought her into her family as one of her own._

The letter ended there.

Edelgard leaned forward slightly, her hair obscuring her features in an almost childlike way. She placed a hand across her stomach as she whispered, “I received a message today. It seems that my child will be returning to me.”

Those words were not at all what Byleth had expected to hear, and the words from the letter were slow to process. “Your…?”

“Child.” Edelgard’s lips puckered as if she’d eaten something sour.

“Is this…did you…” Words tripped over themselves as they tried to exit Byleth’s mouth. A child? Edelgard? How could she, who saw everything, have missed something so large? Byleth missed nothing. Or so she had thought.

“Want this?” Edelgard scoffed. “No, this is not something I ever would have planned. To raise a child in a world filled with such…” She couldn’t finish the thought. “I have not yet brought about enough to change to make this world worthy of such a thing. I had no intention of raising this child. In fact, I’ve given her no thought at all in as many years as she’s been alive.”

“What will you do?” Byleth had her own thoughts, but she would stick by her duty to support Edelgard whatever way she could, no matter what she chose. “Why now? Why is she returning?”

“Her family…They were killed. And with her dual crests, that crest of flames…those who slither in the dark will.” Edelgard shook her head. “I do not have a choice but to take her into the Empire’s protection.” She took a deep breath and looked straight at Byleth. “But after that…”

“I will do what I can to help you.”

“I know you will.” Edelgard twisted Byleth’s ring around her finger and said, “I fear the people will view me as weak. That they will hate me for giving her away.” Her words belied an insecurity she did not normally possess.

“That could never be so, I assure you.” Byleth stroked Edelgard’s cheek with an almost motherly affection. “You are the strongest woman that I know. And to give her up…” Byleth paused, and then an idea came to her. “We will tell people that you gave her up temporarily, in their best interests. So that you could wage the war and pave the way for a better world for everyone while keeping her safe. And in a way that’s not a lie, per say…”

“Who wants to have a child in the midst of war? It’s unthinkable.” Edelgard’s face relaxed as she considered the thought. “It’s not safe,” she concluded, as she came to agreement with Byleth’s train of thought. “This was the best choice for everyone.”

Byleth nodded, unsure of where they would go from this situation, only that she would see their relationship through until the end. When Byleth thought of Edelgard being with child…and then letting that child go…Was this partly the source of all her anger? “I am with you,” she assured the girl. This could be the change that Edelgard needed, the final catalyst to her healing. Reuniting with a child and taking care of that child…Byleth could only hope that the act would be enough to fix Edelgard where she had continually failed.

“Thank you.” Her face relaxed significantly as she sank back in the chair.

“May I ask…who was the father?”

Edelgard crossed the room to a small bamboo shelf that contained her collection of war trophies. Memorabilia and body parts she had brought home from battles to remember those who had fallen and everything that the war had cost. Her hand closed around one, a small jar filled with some unidentifiable liquid, in which floated a single light blue eye. With a sudden scream of rage, she took the jar and hurled it against the wall, where it shattered into a million pieces. Her hands shaking with sadness or rage or both, she sank to the ground and stared at the mess she had made.

Byleth rose to her feet. “El…”

“You may go.”

“I…”

“GO!” Edelgard’s eyes blazed with a fire Byleth had not seen outside of battle. In a quieter tone, she added, “I would like to be alone. When the child comes, please receive her.”

Byleth turned slowly, and then with a glance over her shoulder at a still knelling Edelgard, slipped out of the room. They had had a moment, she and Edelgard, where it felt like maybe things could change, but then Edelgard pushed her away again just as violently as in the past. Byleth couldn’t help but feel like she was failing, and she feared what would happen when that little girl arrived.


	7. Burn

Year: 1194

Seven bandits and one random raccoon later, and Caladria found herself becoming frustrated and disenchanted with the forest. With no real weapon other than her fists, Seteth was loathe to let her fight and seemed to much prefer taking down the faceless attackers on his own. Plus, Caladria had never been outside the bounds of the Empire before, that she remembered, and she had certainly never walked as far as they had that evening. It was a sign of her privilege, she knew, but she much preferred to travel by mount. “This is me going on an adventure,” she said to herself. “This is me, going on an adventure, finding out who my father was, and gaining my freedom.” A few more minutes of following Seteth through the dark and a bramble snagged in her hair. “Freedom,” she growled as she yanked the wayward twigs from her tangled strands.

“What was that?” Seteth’s voice drifted back to her from somewhere up ahead in the foliage. “Did you just say something?”

“No,” she called to him, “I’m fine!” Another step, another twig. She was better than fine. Great even. Truly fantastic.

Seteth appeared in the murky dusk. “If you pull up the hood on your cloak, the bramble will be less likely to ensnare your hair.”

Caladria flushed a deep red of embarrassment and found herself glad the darkness was there to shade her. “I…” she stumbled, ashamed of all she did not know. “Thank you,” was what she settled on.

“Stay close to me.” The man parted more branches and tromped down a path Caladria couldn’t see. “We have almost arrived.”

The words reminded her of another journey, many many moons ago. A woman with long gray locks and a bow over her shoulder, parting the branches and saying, _We have almost arrived,_ with a turn to Caladria and a smile, but…The image faded before Caladria could fully grasp onto it.

They came upon a wall in the darkness, and Seteth knelt down on the ground and brushed aside a covering of flowers and fallen leaves to reveal a panel covered in symbols unlike any Caladria had seen before. She tried to study them as his fingers did a dance they’d obviously done many times before, but things moved too quickly and the base of the wall was suddenly opening.

“Follow,” Seteth ordered, plunging into the tunnel without waiting to see if she was behind him. He came to a stop in the near black. “The torch.” The sound of something scraping the wall. “Can you light it?”

Caladria felt through the darkness to take the torch from his outstretched hand. “I…”

“If you are like your mother, I believe that you can summon the magic of fire,” he gently informed her.

“I have never studied that.” She felt the wood in the darkness, felt her way up to tip of the torch where the fire would appear, if she only knew what she was doing.

“It is a shame that she never trained you.”

“I was trained!” Caladria felt the heat returning to her face yet again. “I can use the dagger, and the bow and…” Her voice trailed off as fought the urge to defend herself. She _was_ curious if she had the capacity for magic. “But…if I wanted to…how would I do it?”

A sigh came from the darkness.

Caladria’s skin prickled and she glared at the man even though she couldn’t see him. “You have no right to be frustrated with me. I did save your life after all. If I don’t know how to work your magics that is not my fault.” After a beat of silence she added, more calmly, “Perhaps you could…tell me how?”

“Close your eyes. Concentrate. Picture a flame in your mind.”

His words were soothing, and she did as he said. Nothing happened. “I don’t think this is working.”

“Concentrate,” he told her again. “Picture the fire, the heat of it. The smell.”

She held the flame in her mind, with its shades of orange, yellow, and red. The lantern she kept on her desk, the torch on the wall of the main palace, the smoke that drifted upwards—she let all of the images flood her mind until she could almost smell that particular odor of the flame…

“That’s it…” Seteth whispered. “Concentrate. Harder.”

When Caladria opened her eyes, the tiniest of flames had appeared at the end of the torch.

“Good!” Seteth’s face was shadowed and ghost-like in the dark. “Now, hold up your other hand, palm down. Guide the flame to function as your need requires.”

Caladria followed his instructions, and the flame grew bolder until his features could be fully made out. She studied the torch with a sense of pride and a bit of wondering what her mother would think of her now. Doing things she had never known herself capable of.

Seteth took the torch and led her forward into the dark stone tunnel. The smell of it was like none other—a heaviness reminiscent of mold and death. The adrenaline of the magic departed, leaving Caladria with a heavy tired feeling. Her feet ached, and she wanted nothing more than to sit. But the tunnel dragged on for what seemed like forever, and there was absolutely no way she was sitting on that ground. Besides, what would Seteth think of her? His opinion already seemed to oscillate widely.

Seteth’s voice drifted back to her from up ahead. “We have almost arrived. They may need some…time to adjust to your presence, so I would say it is best you stay quiet, as your looks make it immediately apparent who you are.”

“They?”

“My people.” His footsteps slowed against the stone as they approached a dark door. “It is nothing personal. Well.” He cleared his throat. “I suppose it is a tad personal. Your mother has…”

“My mother has done unspeakable things,” Caladria cut him off, “to so many people. But I am not her. I was never her.” The words felt like a lie even as they left her lips. She was not her mother, but she had tried to replicate her for so many years because she thought that was the way things were supposed to be.

Seteth acknowledged her with a slight nod in the dim light. “I have already begun to see the places your paths diverge. But the others will need a chance to see that too.” He slid his hand down the door and pressed something Caladria couldn’t see. The door slid open to reveal a brighter staircase. “Here we go, then.”

Caladria followed him up the stairs, at the top of which they found themselves in an almost lobby of sorts. “Where are we?”

“This is Liberté.” A young girl with hair the same color as Seteth’s approached them. “Father, we had thought you lost.” She embraced Seteth fiercely as Caladria took a step back to absorb her surroundings. “Who is this you have brought?” Her eyes were flooded with suspicion as she looked Caladria up and down.

Seteth stepped out of the hug and gestured back at her. “Flayn, this is Caladria. Caladria, my daughter, Flayn.”

“Caladria…Caladria?” Flayn’s hand drifted back towards the lance at her waist. “Father, why would you bring this girl here?” She hefted her lance and held it steady at Caladria’s throat.

Caladria didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. She had traveled much too far for this to be the end. She tried to heed Seteth’s words to be silent but found words tumbling out defensively. “I…I saved his life, you know.”

The lance stood fast. “Is this true?” The girl directed the question at her father rather than Caladria.

“You may lower your weapon, Flayn. The girl is no threat. She helped me to escape the Empire.”

Flayn lowered her lance but kept it pointed in Caladria’s direction. “She is the spitting image of her mother.”

“She assassinated Edelgard.” Seteth reached out and pushed Flayn’s hand down, forcing the lance to her side. “The Emperor has fallen.”

“Is…is this true?” The question was directed to Caladria this time. “Edelgard is dead?”

“Y-yes.” Caladria moved out of the lance’s reach with her hands slightly raised. “Edelgard is dead.”

“Well then. Long live the Kingdom.” Flayn turned and vanished into a hallway to their right.

“Follow,” Seteth told her as he too went down the hallway.

Their voices drifted back to Caladria as she traced their footsteps down the hall and up and winding stairwell.

“Do you need healing, Father?”

“I am fine, Flayn. The girl saved me before any harm could befall me.”

“And you brought her here?”

“She too needed saving. Bringing her out of the Empire was the last I could do as payment.”

They emerged in a greenhouse filled with plants Caladria had never seen before. Flowers in all the colors of the rainbow. Strange fruits and vegetables. Men and women gathering that which was ripe into baskets. And a woman about her mother’s age, seated on a bench beside a flowing fountain. Burns spread up her neck and face, and as she shifted to face the trio, she revealed her right eye was sealed shut by scar tissue. Caladria tried not to shy away. She was no stranger to injuries, but these scars were…

“Y-you.” The woman rose with the aid of a cane and drew herself to her full height to stare down Caladria with her single seeing eye.

“Bernadetta, stand down,” Seteth commanded. “She is here with me.”

“The Emperor has fallen.” Flayn laid a hand on Bernadetta’s shoulder. “By this girl’s hand.”

“Y-you killed y-your mother? Edelgard is dead?” Bernadetta sank down onto her bench again. A silence had surrounded them at her words, followed by whispers repeating the news. _The Emperor has fallen_.

Caladria stared at her feet, uncertain what to say or do in this place where she was so hated for the way she looked. “I did. She is.” The weight of what she had done suddenly pressed heavy on her shoulders, and she found herself being guided onto the bench by Seteth.

“Sit, girl. It is okay. I must go and announce my return to the council, but you can rest here with Bernadetta for a spell.” Around them the gardens returned to life as the shock of Edelgard’s death sank in. “Do not go anywhere.” He took Flayn’s arm and the pair departed down yet another hallway.

“You c-can call me Bernie.” The woman shook her purple hair out of her eyes and shifted her cane to the other side of the bench so Caladria could have more room.

Caladria tried not to stare at her scars, but it was difficult. There were so many, and so extensive.

Bernie must have noticed because she said closed her eye and then said, “We were i-in battle. Your m-mother and I. I took the arms position on the hill to defend her, b-but she…When it suited her, Edelgard lit the hill on fire and she left me to burn…”

Caladria’s heart sank. “I…I am sorry.” She didn’t have the right words. She glanced away, at the flowers, into the trees, anywhere but at the woman’s scars. She noticed tiny creatures that looked like miniature dragons flitting through the trees. “What are they?” she pointed, desperate to change the subject.

“Miniketes.” With a flick of her hand, a green minikete and a purple flew from the gardens to perch on her shoulder. “They’re guardians. They look after us. And we look after them.”

“I have never seen such things.” Caladria stared intently at the purple one, the same shade of purple as her mother’s eyes had been.

“This is Saoirse.” Bernie raised a hand and the small purple creature stepped delicately onto it. “She’s s-shy and d-doesn’t take to strangers eas—“

The woman fell silent as Saoirse cocked her head and then hopped onto Caladria’s outstretched palm where she curled up and went to sleep.

“She doesn’t take to people this way. Y-you must be special.” Bernie looked at the ground and then trained her eye back on Caladria. “Your father is the same way with them. He has the gift.”

“My…father?” Caladria’s hand shook so badly she almost dropped Saoirse. “My mother always told me he was dead.”

“No, sweetie. Your father is very much alive.”


	8. Mother

Year: 1186

The girl was adorable. Edelgard could at least admit that much. She watched from afar as the tiny human sat on a bench, her blonde hair tied back with ribbons and pushed from her face with a black headband, her small hands folded uncertainly in her lap. Edelgard did not remember much of her own fifth year, but from what she knew, the girl was her spitting image. Caladria, they had named her. Edelgard knew the name meant healer. Flier. Angel. Bird. She liked that last one. The girl looked like a little bird, all folded up on the slab of stone, waiting for her mother to feed her. Her mother. Edelgard _was_ her mother.

Rather than approach the girl, Edelgard turned away, slipping between pillars to reenter her room. Had she made a mistake, allowing the girl to come? She found she wasn’t certain, of anything. And that was the strangest feeling, because Edelgard prided herself on her certainty. She sank into the chair at her desk and shuffled through the plethora of research painstakingly transcribed onto paper. Notes on Agarthan society, everything that she could pull from the historical archives on the creation and behaviors of Those Who Slither in the Dark. She had allied with them when it served her purposes, but she was well aware who they truly are and how they would need to be dismantled and destroyed for the betterment of the Empire. They had gone underground at the end of the war, but Edelgard was certain they weren’t gone—at least not completely. She had destroyed Cornelia. She would destroy Thales as well. She needed time—time to study and then fully eliminate crests, therefore crippling that darkness where it would hurt the most.

She would end them. Oh, she would end them. They would pay for everything they had done. A child was not something she had time for. She knew that then, as much as she had known it five years prior.

A knock from behind her on the still open door. “El.”

“Byleth.” Edelgard turned around in her chair to face her teacher. Friend? Lover? Their relationship had become suddenly undefined and fallen into the realm of gray feelings and emotions that Edelgard found she lacked time for.

“The girl has come. She is your spitting image.” Byleth took a seat on the edge of a plush black chair by the door.

Edelgard shifted her attention back to the papers on her desk. “I saw her.”

“I believe that she would like to meet you. If you are ready.”

With a side eye over her shoulder, Edelgard retorted, “I will never be ready.”

“El…”

“She is a reminder of everything that I gave up to be where I am. And I am not sorry, for any of that. But that does not mean I wish to be reminded.” She picked up her pen with zero intention of writing, solely to tap it against the wood of her desk in a rapid pattern. “Byleth, I don’t have time for a child.”

Byleth’s disapproval was apparent without even looking at her. “I believe this is unfair to her.”

“How is it fair to _me_?”

Byleth was quiet for a moment before saying, “Edelgard, you made a choice. You chose to have her. You chose to have her and then not take responsibility for that choice. But now you must find a way to do that. And I know, that with the things…What the war has done to you. The way it altered your…” Byleth’s voice trailed off.

Humanity? Was that what the woman had been trying to say? “I thought that I was doing just that. Taking responsibility.” Edelgard stared at her hands, a mirror of Caladria’s behavior earlier. She suddenly felt very, very small, and that was not a feeling she liked. “I thought that in sending her away, I was making the best possible choice. I did not account for the destruction of her family.”

“Perhaps you should have.” Byleth cleared her throat. “I think…You need to find a way to fit the girl into the fold. To accept her and where she came from, and her place within your life. She is lonely, and she is scared. She is without the only family that she has ever known. I am sure you’ve felt that way at some point in your life.”

While Edelgard wanted to say she had never felt that way, she knew Byleth’s words had a ring of truth to them. “When I was younger…being taken away by my uncle. Used. I never forgot that. I don’t know how to be a mother when I never really had one. I cannot take away what has happened to the girl when I can’t even take away what has happened to me.”

“She will forget. The girl. Caladria. She will forget where she was in the past. We will tell her that she was here, all along. That she belonged here, that she was loved.”

Edelgard’s brow furrowed as she considered the idea. “We can raise her to be the heiress to the Empire. Train her.” After a moment she added, “We can utilize her crests as a tool in our research against Those Who Slither in the Dark.”

“Which could be the key to defeating Thales once and for all,” Byleth agreed.

Edelgard considered this concept. She knew that the girl had two crests. Could they be removed? Redistributed? What power did the child hold, and what could they do with it?

Edelgard turned to face the older woman once again. “Bring the girl to me. I wish to see her, face to face.”

As Byleth departed to do just that, Edelgard stared after her in ponderance. Perhaps Byleth was right. Perhaps Edelgard could be a mother, if, like every other chosen piece of her life, she could use it to her advantage. When Byleth returned with the girl in tow, hidden slightly behind her left hip, Edelgard looked her up and down appraisingly. “Step in, girl. Do not be afraid.”

Caladria stepped forward, taking in everything around her. Her eyes were the blue of the sky. They were _his_ eyes. Edelgard glanced to the corner where the broken jar still remained before returning her gaze to the child. She tried to open herself up to the possibilities presented by the situation, even as something inside her heart closed. When her eyes finally met Edelgard’s they lit slightly. “You are…my mother?”

“Yes.” Edelgard said quietly. She hoped that with this acceptance, the girl could become everything she needed her to be. “Yes, little bird. I am your mother.”


	9. The Prince Remains

Year: 1194

“Alive…?” Caladria’s brow furrowed as she struggled to grasp this new information. “Mother always told me he was…”

“Alive.” Bernie confirmed gently. “O-o-one hundred percent alive. N-not what I would call one hundred percent…well. But alive.”

Caladria could not hold on to the possibilities that flitted through her mind, the very thoughts of her father actually in existence. The years of her life only knowing of her father from the ways in which Edelgard strove to make them _not_ alike—the way her mother would gel her hair down, force her to wear it straight with ribbons, train her in the ways of the axe rather than her natural gift for lance. The idea of knowing other things, who the man really was…

Caladria wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to ask, but her curiosity overwhelmed her as she blurted out, “What is he like?”

“He-he was smart. F-fierce, but in a good way. Gentle and understanding in the ways that counted. H-he cared so much for his friends.”

“Was?”

Bernie’s face fell. “He c-changed. After the war. After l-losing her. Losing his fr-friends. He lost a lot.”

“I know what that feels like, I think.” Caladria followed the path of Bernie’s minikete as it took flight from her shoulder and disappeared into the flowers behind them.

“H-he had a very good friend, your father. Dedue. I believe losing him in the war wa-was the l-last straw and that it was all just—“

“A lot of loss,” Caladria finished.

“He has been different ev-ever since then. He s-sees things. Hears things. He i-is still gentle but h-he almost seems li-like he is not a-all there.”

Caladria didn’t know what to feel. Disappointed? She hadn’t known the man still existed at all, and now she was being told that he both did and did not exist. She felt pathetically young and unequipped for the situation.

“I-I think he m-might like to meet you. That y-you could help him.”

“I…don’t think I could. I’m nothing. I wouldn’t be any help at all.” Caladria closed her eyes, the feel and scent of blood on her hands still fresh. Her face washed with a shame she had not yet allowed herself to feel. “What he would think of me…” She turned away so that the older woman could not see her face as tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. Her fingers trailed across Saoirse’s wings, and the tiny purple dragon rested silently in her palm, one large eye trained on her sadly as if absorbing her emotions. And in a way, she was.

“He would think you quite brave.” Bernie rested a hand on Caladria’s knee. “He would think you stronger than anyone else for seeing what needed to be done and being brave enough to do.” The words were so filled with conviction that they lacked the woman’s normal stutter.

“But I…I killed her. I never wanted to kill anyone. I just wanted…” Caladria’s voice trailed off. “What if there was another way?”

“Y-your mother was one of the m-m-most determined people I have e-ever known. She n-never would have s-s-stopped. You know that, r-right? She never would have stopped until the end of…well, everything.”

Caladria considered this for a moment before quietly saying, “She was…passionate. To say the least.” Caladria’s mind filled with so many moments reflective of that passion, moments dating all the way back to the moment her mother had tried to extract her crests in the name of the greater good.

“I had thought us friends, y-yet she left me to burn. To _burn_.” Bernie traced the edges of the scar on her face as she continued, “It took not being able to ph-physically see the w-way I used to for me to see the way things really were with her.”

“I think if anyone could have reasoned with her, it would have been me, though?” The end of Caladria’s statement turned up with uncertainty. “Maybe whatever was wrong with her is wrong with me too.” She had sworn all along that she would never kill, that she had to gain her freedom from the Empire to _not_ kill, but then she had murdered her mother. Suddenly in her head the two ideas did not agree. Suddenly, she felt very small.

Bernie shook her head vehemently. “Th-there was absolutely no reasoning with that w-woman. S-she was s-so s-set in her ways that s-she….There was no reasoning with Edelgard. Her way was the only way. And there is _nothing_ w-wrong with you!”

“But…” Caladria had not been true to her word. She felt dishonorable. She felt damaged, like the stain of her mother’s passion had bled through everything that made her her.

“No.” Bernie held up her hand. “I b-believe you did what was right. And the others will too. I k-know it. You aren’t y-your mother. You a-aren’t Edelgard.”

Caladria stared down at Saoirse, still in her palm, watching as the minikete slowly blinked and then let out the tiniest yawn before drawing in her tail to go to sleep. She could not picture Edelgard holding such a fragile creature, and certainly not for this long.

“S-she would not be this co-comfortable with you if you were her, you know.” Bernie extended her hand and her minikete returned from the flowers with a mouthful of pink and blue petals.

“I would like to meet him, I think.” Caladria had never felt like more of a child than she did in that moment. It was everything she had ever wanted and more than she ever could have hoped, but it was terrifying all the same.

“S-Seteth might not l-like it. But Dimitri is my friend and now you are too, in a way.”

“Seteth might not like what exactly?” The green haired man swept back into the garden room.

“I would like to meet my father,” Caladria stated, with much more certainty than she actually felt.

The gaze the man darted at Bernie was not entirely friendly. “You told her, Bernadetta?”

“S-she needed to know.” It was obvious that Bernie was intimidated by Seteth, for reasons Caladria could not ascertain.

He sighed. “That she did, you are correct.”

Bernie visibly relaxed as she reached out to cup her hand over the top of her cane. “I b-believe…He would like t-to see her, if h-he knew who she w-was.”

Seteth considered this for a moment. “I am inclined to agree, but I also find myself not inclined to trust her that fully.”

Caladria fought back the urge to interject as defend herself, instead allowing Bernie to continue to advocate on her behalf.

“L-look at Saoirse.” Bernie pointed at Caladria’s palm where the tiny dragon remained curled up, sound asleep. “You know s-she would never be this comfortable is t-things were not okay. The m-miniketes would not show themselves t-to her at a-all if s-she could not be trusted.”

“I suppose we could give it a try.”

Caladria’s heart skipped first a beat, then another. “N-now? We could go now?”

The man nodded. “I do not see why not.” He gestured down the hallway from whence he had come. “Follow.”

And follow Caladria did, with Saoirse resting in her hand and Bernie trailing behind. The woman’s cane made a clack noise against the stone as they moved into the dim hall. It was the only marker of time as they walked for what felt like hours but could truly have only been minutes, until they stood in front of a door.

Seteth raised his hand and knocked against the dark wood. “Prince Dimitri?” There was no answer. He knocked again. “Dimitri, we have brought someone to see you. May we enter?”

Still nothing. Caladria felt the little nerve she had managed to build up begin to leave her. “Maybe this is a terrible idea. We should go.”

Bernie raised her hand to issue her own knock. “D-Dimitri, I’m coming in.” She turned the knob and stepped inside, beckoning to Caladria to follow.

He was crouched in the corner of the room, the man she presumed was her father. Long, dark blonde hair spilled over his shoulders, and his hands worked their way through a potted plant, removing the fruits that had blossomed there and shoving them into his mouth almost frantically.

“D-Dimitri?” Bernie stuttered. “You have a guest.”

Dimitri turned towards them slowly, still crouched. He took in Bernadetta with a near smile, but Caladria saw the moment that his gaze fell on her. Hissingle remaining eye locked onto her and turned a near black in the shadows. “ _You_ ,” he spat. He produced a spear out of nowhere, and he lunged forward at Caladria with a guttural roar.


	10. Blood and Darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in this! But I'm finally back at it, after taking some breaks to play with other characters :)
> 
> A reminder that this is my Slight AU version of Post-Crimson Flower.

Year: 1187

“Do you think the room is too…off-putting?” Byleth dragged her fingers across the sheet-covered table. “Maybe we could make it a little brighter.”

“What relation does that have to the task at hand?” Edelgard was distracted, focused on her notes and the day ahead of them.

“I feel like we should try to make her comfortable at the very least.”

Edelgard’s eyes flashed in irritation. “There is a pillow.” She honestly didn’t see why the child’s comfort mattered when she was to be used for the good of the Empire and the mission.

“El…” Byleth started, then stopped, then started again. “I know that the study of Caladria’s…special nature was in a way my idea, but this is not exactly what I had in mind…”

Edelgard sighed impatiently. “We got rid of your crest, did we not?”

“That was different.”

And so it had been. Slaying Rhea in that moment had done something to Byleth, made her…alive. She had never truly been alive before, had been a goddess of sorts. And Edelgard knew enough about crests to know that their origins were not all exactly the same as what had been inside of Byleth.

“I just feel like there must be a way to…” Edelgard knew what would come for her. A short life. A life well lived, certainly. But a short life. The experiments done on her as a child were nothing short of horrific. She didn’t talk about what had happened to her much, outside of her nightmares. On the nightmare nights, she had told Byleth small details of what had been done to her. “I have so much to finish, my teacher. The work is never done. I want to live to see it. And maybe this is the way we get rid of all the crests, through the knowledge we gain here.”

Byleth was quiet for several moments before she replied, “I feel like there may be a less harsh option to gain that knowledge.”

“This won’t be harsh. And it is for the greater good of her people. I am certain she understands that. And I am certain this is the path to my uncle’s end. To the end of all of Those Who Slither in the Dark.”

“She is a child, El.”

“My child.”

“That doesn’t mean she wants the same things you do.”

Edelgard considered this, her eyes roving once again over her notes, the thoughts and ideas that would lead her to a longer life and the furthering of her ideals. “Maybe not yet. But she will.”

“El…”

Edelgard whipped around so quickly that the papers in her hand scattered across the floor.

“I am so sorry for the things that happened to you,” Byleth continued quietly. “You know that. But as you said. She is your _child_. And this…hurting her the same way you were hurt…it will not fix things.”

As she reached to collect the scattered papers on the floor, Edelgard paused for the slightest of moments and closed her eyes. “Just go get her. Go get the girl,” she ordered.

At Byleth’s departure, Edelgard found herself drifting down the hallway and then outside to the small entry where a bush of black and red roses grew. Edelgard did not like to think about the times before, the years as a child, the experiments. The people who used her and her siblings, in terms of what had been done to her. She preferred to think about that time in terms of what _she_ would do about it. And she would never be powerless again. With deft movements, she plucked several of the dark roses from the bush, ignoring the thorns that dug into her skin and the blood that trickled between her fingers. She returned to the stone room and placed the flowers in a glass jar within view of where the child would lay. From the cupboard, she retrieved a red and black quilt, a gift long ago whose origins she could not recall, and draped it across the cold sterile table. And then she stood back and admired her work. Comfort. This was comfort.

A noise at the door behind her; a clearing of the throat. Edelgard turned as Byleth entered the room. Caladria trailed in behind the older woman, her eyes wide and a small brown bear clutched in her right hand. Her left hand fiddled uncertainly with the large bow that held her cloak closed around her neck. Edelgard regarded the girl with an eagle eye. “Good morning.”

“Hello,” the little girl whispered to the floor. Her tiny hand refused to let go of her cloak.

“Look at people when you speak to them, child.” Edelgard snapped the air impatiently in front of the girl. “With confidence.” To Byleth, she waved a hand and said, “You may leave us.”

“You do not want my…” Byleth’s tone conveyed her confusion without Edelgard even having to see her face.

“We will call for you when we are finished.” Edelgard did not _want_ to see the woman’s face. She couldn’t absorb Byleth’s emotions, couldn’t let herself second guess her decisions any further. Instead, she cast her gaze directly on Caladria until she heard the door open and shut behind them.

The little girl tightened her fingers around her bear. “What am I-I doing here?”

“Walk over to the table,” Edelgard pointed.

Caladria did as she was told, her eyes back on the floor and the toes of her shoes dragging slightly as she walked.

Edelgard put out a palm in the girl’s path almost without thinking. “Stop.”

“I’m s-sorry,” she stuttered, still refusing to lift her gaze.

“No sorry. Never apologize.” Edelgard reached out and turned the girl around. “Go back to the doorway and do it again. With your eyes up and forward. With _purpose_.”

Caladria took a hesitant step forward, but then as the bear fell to one side, a look colored her face like Edelgard had only ever seen on her own. Three steps, and then four, her eyes up the entire way, and Caladria was back by the table. “Like this?”

“Like that. Purpose.” Edelgard boosted the girl up so she was sitting on the table. A small metal device waited on the side table, and Edelgard picked it up and held it out towards the girl. “Hold your arm over this.”

Caladria stared at the object. “What is it?”

“You are going to help me with a small experiment. You would like to be a helper, yes?”

“I would like that very much.” Her head bobbed up and down rapidly.

“Hold out your arm,” Edelgard repeated as she held out the small crest checker.

The little girl did as she was told, and the small device produced a purple light. A familiar pattern appeared, followed rapidly by a second pattern. “What is that?” Caladria’s wide eyes glowed in the purple light.

“These are your crests.” They were exactly as Edelgard had known they would be, yet somehow she’d hoped things would be different.

“What are crests?”

“For Emperor’s sake…” How could the girl not know what crests were? Just how exactly had she been raised outside the arms of the Empire that this knowledge would not have been included in her education?

“I—I’m sorry.”

“ _Never_ apologize,” Edelgard spat, frustrated at having to repeat herself. And then, more calmly, she added, “Crests are a curse. A curse of power that people do not need and cannot handle.”

“So they’re…bad? I’m bad?” Caladria stared at the device, now powered down, with horror.

Edelgard blinked slowly, uncertain of what to say. She so rarely became speechless in that way, and she did not like the way losing control of the conversation made her feel.

“Can I get rid of it?” The child was almost in tears.

Edelgard seized the opportunity to regain control. “I would like to get rid of crests altogether, to get rids of these false deities and powers. But I haven’t yet figured out how to do it safely. And this is where I need you to help.”

The girl clearly struggled with what to emote, but two fat tears trickled down her cheeks. “I…”

“We do not cry!” Edelgard slapped her palm down on the table next to Caladria. “We do _not_ cry!”

It was ineffective—the girl only cried more, tears dripping down off the end of her chin and staining her cloak.

Edelgard remembered a different time. A different girl. A girl who had cried and then had lost everything. She sat next to the table, tried for a gentler tone. “It…Crying does not solve anything. It never has and it never will. We are from a very long line of strength, and we honor that in everything we do. In how we present ourselves. Sometimes things hurt, but we swallow it down. Sometimes we aren’t good at things, but we pretend until we can be. With confidence. Purpose.”

“L-like when we walk. Like before.”

Edelgard nodded, relieved the girl was catching on. “And we help our family. And our country.”

Caladria thought about this for a moment and then said quietly, “I would like to help you.” After a beat she added, “Mother,” almost as if the word was foreign on her lips. In a way it was.

With a glance at the floor, Edelgard fought the urge to correct the child. If it was easier, for the girl to call her Mother, than Mother it would be. For now. Silently, she took Caladria’s arm and turned it palm up so that the veins were exposed. “To start, I’ll need to take some blood.”

Caladria looked away, saying nothing, but her fingers dug into the fabric of the blanket so hard the skin grew pale.

Edelgard stuck a vein and drew two vials of blood for Hanneman and Lindhardt to research before wrapping the arm in fabric to stanch the flow. To her credit, the girl didn’t utter a single cry. She was perhaps more like her mother than things had first appeared. She could take what came next. A small device waited on the side table, and Edelgard swept it into her palm. “This will hurt,” she told Caladria, making no effort to look the girl in the eyes. She wasn’t even sure why she’d said it, just that it felt like something she should tell the girl before the pain came. Red hot, searing across her skin as if hundreds of red ants were leaving behind their trails of fire.

Edelgard knew that pain well, and she was sorry to inflict it—but it had to be done. There was no other choice.

She powered on the device and the girl screamed as it read the magic, the very life force, within her. It took Edelgard back to that other time, that other girl, her hair still brown and her face edged in terror. But Edelgard pushed that girl back, out of her head. There was no place for those emotions anymore. What had been done to her as a child had been awful and lacked reason, but what she was doing to Caladria now was completely different. It was for the greater good of their home, their kingdom. If Edelgard wanted that, her child should too. Would. It was only a matter of time.

Reaching behind Caladria’s head, Edelgard carefully adjusted the pillow before going another round.


	11. Forward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forever excited that Caladria and Dimitri will finally have the chance to know each other, but also forever concerned about Caladria's mental state. She's just a kid!
> 
> And I'm just a writer, with feelings, so please play nice in the sandbox. Thanks :).

Year: 1194

“You!” the blonde-haired, blue-eyed man roared as he hefted a spear and dove towards Caladria full force.

“D-Dimitri, NO!” Bernie yelled.

Dimitri ignored her as he stalked forward, driving Caladria into the wall next to the doorway by the tip of the spear. There was just enough force to hold her, but not enough to hurt her. Yet. “Tell me why you bring this traitress Emperor to my quarters?!? TELL ME WHAT YOU SEEK TO GAIN!!!”

Caladria’s words stumbled and tripped within her mouth before they were fully formed. She was terrified to say anything, to move. None of the past several days had been what she expected, but this moment really took the cake. She had no words, only tears that she held in, angry they had made an appearance at all. She had nothing. No one. And she felt a fire inside her, a burning disappointment that told her she was done taking this garbage from the people who were supposed to care for her most. “I do not want anything from you,” she managed to quietly utter, raising one hand to wrap around the spear. “Let me step aside and I will take my leave.” The words came out much braver than Caladria truly felt, and she took more pride than she should have in how pleased her mother would have been in that reaction. 

The spear he clutched glowed almost imperceptibly at her touch, a slight pulse that caused Dimitri to stumble and then send the weapon clattering to the floor. “A—Areadbhar, _responds_ to you?”

Caladria hid her shaking hands behind her back.

“Who _are_ you?” He took a step back. “You are her spitting image; every inch Edelgard from head to toe. And yet, you are not…”

“Dimitri,” Bernadetta interjected, “this is Caladria. Your d-da-daughter.”

Dimitri sat, his face frozen in a sea of confusion. “Daughter?”

Caladria could see the wheels in his head turning as he struggled to grasp onto the idea. 

“Why have you come here?” His voice demanded something of Caladria that she didn’t understand, but his eyes were softer, almost gentle. 

Caladria didn’t know what to say, so she uttered the words that everyone she’d been surrounded with for the past day seemed to want to hear. “The Emperor has fallen.”

“Fallen?” 

Was he just going to repeat everything everybody else said? What sort of mess had she gotten herself into? “She’s dead. I murdered her before I could be crowned heiress apparent.” The words sounded strange as they left her lips and she struggled with the emotions that threatened to overcome her. “I…murdered her.” First her mother. Now…this. For Emperor’s sake. 

Dimitri looked to Bernie, seemingly for confirmation. “It’s true,” she nodded. “The Emperor is dead.”

He looked to Caladria again, and she held his gaze with much more bravery than she actually felt. “The Emperor is fallen,” she said again, the weight of the words suddenly more than she could handle. Nothing about meeting her father was anything like she’d thought it would be. At all. And she wanted nothing more than to be done with all of it. To Bernie she whispered, “I’m so tired. Is there somewhere I could lie down for a while?”

“Y-yes, of course. You can stay with me, if you’d l-like.” 

Caladria turned and left the room without another word to the man who was nothing like what she’d thought he’d be. She followed Bernie down first one hallway, and then another and another until they arrived at a door. Bernie pushed it open and said, “I h-hope this is all right. I’m sorry it isn’t much, but…”

“It is a bed,” Caladria returned gratefully. “I haven’t seen a bed in days and I’m just…”

“Rest,” Bernie told her. “It’s been quite the day. I will go and get something to eat, and I can bring you back something too

Caladria lowered herself onto the mattress, gently placing Saoirse beside her on the pillow. The tiny dragon immediately curled up in Caladria’s hair as she laid down, and Caladria found herself beyond the point of caring that the bed didn’t even belong to her. 

When she closed her eyes though, the sleep didn’t approach easily, instead at war with the images of the Emperor falling to the ground, hands to her wound, and then dead. The blood. 

_Crying does not solve anything._

Edelgard’s voice echoed so abruptly through the room that Caladria’s eyes flew open, convinced her mother was actually there. But she wasn’t. Caladria had no one to be with except herself. “I’m…not crying,” she said to no one. “I didn’t cry. Not even when he—“ Her voice broke, and she failed to finished the thought. 

_Not even when he hated you? Because he hated you. Everyone hates you now, because of what you did._

Caladria closed her eyes and let sleep erase everything.

*

When Caladria next opened her eyes, there was someone sitting next to her in the near darkness. She rolled over groggily and realized it was him. Dimitri. Her father. He held Saoirse in his fingers and gently stroked the dragon’s small scales in a manner so unlike what she had seen of him in their brief encounter. 

The large man startled upon seeing Caladria looking at him, unseating Saoirse. He gently shifted the dragon in his palm so that she was once again comfortable, and then used his free hand to move his sloppy blonde hair back behind his ear before speaking. “I wanted to apologize. For earlier. For my poor behavior.”

Caladria sat up in the bed, the blanket still encasing her legs, and leaned back against the wall, unsure of how to respond.

Dimitri sat in silence too for several minutes before he said, “You are her spitting image. And sometimes, when things are really dark, I still can see her when I close my eye. The look on her face as she hurt me, betrayed me, again and again, in the name of…whatever it was she wanted. What she wanted was always so incredibly important to her, and there was a time when I admired that in her more than anything. But it became…”

“The most important thing,” Caladria finished for him.

“More than relationships. More than family. More than….” Dimitri’s voice trailed off as his gaze dimmed to somewhere Caladria couldn’t see.

“Living itself,” Caladria finished again. “The life she wanted to build…she thought that it was everything, but it didn’t even seem like living. Not really. I wanted things to be different. I wanted…She thought she was giving people choices, but all she was doing was taking them away. Everything had to be her way or it was bad. Wrong. I…”

Dimitri’s fingers reached up to gently trace the border of his eye patch as he listened silently.

“Did my mother do that to you?” Caladria drew the blanket even more tightly around herself, uncertain she wanted to know the answer. She could see herself faintly in Dimitri’s mannerisms, from the way he sat almost as if commanding his chair rather than resting in it, to the way his brow knit together while he struggled for the correct response.

He hesitated, resumed stroking Saoirse. “She told me that she had never loved me, ran me through first with her words and then with an axe. And then…” He pointed at the eye patch. 

“I’m sorry.” There was nothing else Caladria could even say.

“But I’ve clung so much to the past, for so long. Seeing you now, realizing that you exist…it appears that you…When you came in, it was like seeing Ed— _her_ all over again. Like she’d come for me, finally, to end things the way she had always intended. And I reacted. But your words here, your simple apology alone, tell me that you are perhaps not as much like her as I assumed. And I would like to know more, if…”

“Sometimes I hear her voice in my head, when I close my eyes. Her words banging around. Telling me to be strong. Walk tall. Know my purpose.” The words spilled from her like vomit. “Know my purpose. Never apologize. She never apologized. For anything. And I barely remember before…But the woman who raised me…”

When she didn’t continue, Dimitri asked, “You were not raised by Edelgard?”

Caladria shook her head slowly. “She gave me away the moment I was born. But when I was…five, I think….The family who raised me was killed.”

“I…am sorry.”

“I can hardly remember them now. But I remember that the woman was gentle…and sweet. They didn’t have much money, but she brought me this little bear.” Saoirse drifted over and landed on Caladria’s lap. “I don’t know what happened to that bear…It was the only object I was allowed to carry with me. When I was taken back to the Empire.”

“You should have been given more. You should have…” Dimitri cleared his throat as he shook his head slowly. “If I had known you existed…I never knew. If I had, I would have…I would have…”

“But you didn’t,” she cut the older man off. “And that isn’t your fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault but hers.”

They sat together for several minutes, before Dimitri said, “Sometimes, I hear her voice too.”

And for the first time in as long as she could remember, Caladria thought that she had maybe found a place she could belong. “I thought that it would stop. That everything would stop. If…”

“If…?”

Caladria withdrew her hand from the mini dragon, scared to press too tightly in her feelings. “If I killed her,” she whispered, “I thought that it would make everything better. For everyone. Not just me. I thought that if I could just stop her ridiculous crusade, that everything would be…And…I killed her.” With a shuddering breath, she leaned back against the wall.

“I may not know much…” Dimitri moved his chair ever so closer to where Caladria pressed into the stone, so kind as to pretend he didn’t see her tears and started again, “I don’t know much…but I do know that there are some who…I’ve been a monster in many ways. I’ve killed many. Some who deserved it, and some who did not. And I have carried the weight of every single one of those people on my journey. Heard their voices.” He extended a hand to Caladria gently, and she took it. “Most of my rage, my revenge…Much of the death was senseless. But I say this because…I do not believe this was senseless. I believe you did something no one else had the courage to do.”

“Does it…get easier?” Caladria liked the feeling of his hand around hers. She had never felt that sort of connection to Edelgard, and she pushed down that little voice as it tried to argue again that everyone would hate her.

“I don’t know how to answer that. I only know that we just have to move forward. Together.”


	12. The Coming Storm

Year: 1189

Caladria was tired. So tired. She had never in her whole eight years been as tired as she was in that moment. But she sat still, silent, cross-legged on the stone slab in near complete darkness. It was Edelgard’s hope that the isolation would cause Caladria to display her crest powers. Self protection, Edelgard had told her. Survival. And then somehow, Edelgard would take those crests, and it would help a lot of people in a way Caladria couldn’t understand.

Caladria was not afraid. She was absolutely not afraid of the dark. Not one little—

Something ran over the girl’s bare foot then, something small and fast and furry, and she squealed loudly before cutting herself off so abruptly that she drew blood from her tongue. No reaction, no fear. Only silence. Silence and darkness.

Silence. And darkness.

Darkness. And silence.

Caladria tried really hard not to think about what the beast might have been, the stories she had read about things that ran around in the dark. She had never been in darkness like this. Hopefully it wasn’t a rat. Maybe it was a dragon. She closed her eyes and pictured the only dragon she’d ever seen, a big white dragon the size of a building bulldozing around and lighting the sky on fire and…

Caladria opened her eyes to a blinding curtain of light encroaching on the darkness.

“Are you all right?”

Caladria couldn’t see who it was, but she knew the voice. “Yes, Byleth.” Closing her eyes again, she blinked and blinked until she could make out the older woman’s dark silhouette against the bright backdrop.

“I’m sure your mother won’t mind if you come out now.”

Caladria’s eye adjusted enough to make out the woman’s hand stretching into her space to try and help her other. “She told me to stay.” She was supposed to help the Empire, and somehow, sitting in the darkness was helping. Maybe when she was older, she would understand how. She couldn’t wait to be older.

“I know, but—“

“I have to do what I’m told.” Caladria wouldn’t let her finish the thought. “Edel-my mother told me to stay and I will stay.”

In truth, Caladria didn’t think of Edelgard as her mother. She remembered another mother, only vaguely now, but the image was still there. A woman who was Edelgard’s opposite in every way—short, round, soft, red-haired, loving. She’d had a father too, but she couldn’t quite grasp the details of him anymore. His laugh echoed in her head when she tried to picture him, and she clung to the memory in the hopes that it would never leave her like the rest had.

Edelgard was….loving, Caladria supposed, but in her own way. She wanted things, and she took them, and when you gave Edelgard what she wanted, she treated you…well, she treated you better than if you didn’t give it to her. And she loved her empire, more than anything.

It was a lot for the eight year old to wrap her brain around, but all in all, Caladria knew she would do what she had been told, because it was easier than the alternative. And it might even earn her her teddy bear back for bedtime that night, the last remaining physical piece she had of the life she’d held before. Fortunately, Caladria was spared from having to object again when Edelgard came down the stairs behind Byleth.

“Has it happened?” Edelgard pushed Byleth aside to peer at Caladria.

Caladria remained silent. She had stayed, yes, but would she be punished for not displaying whatever power Edelgard was looking for? What if she couldn’t save their people?

Byleth grabbed Edelgard by the shoulder and steered her back towards the open the door, where Caladria could almost fully make them both out. “El,” she whispered, clearly thinking she was speaking quietly enough Caladria couldn’t hear, “I don’t know exactly what you expect to happen here.”

“I have told you, my teacher, if we can figure out a way to get her to manifest some crest power, we can use that to trace how to remove it from her safely.”

Byleth looked over her shoulder and saw Caladria watching. “I don’t think this is the way, El. I really don’t.”

“Well I really don’t know what else to do, beyond the researchers suggestion to cut her open and see what’s inside. And that is not a fate made for the Heiress Apparent. I need her to be whole. I also need her in order to learn…and nothing is working as it should.”

Cut her open??? Caladria sat on her hands and focused on having no reaction. There was no telling what would happen later, if she reacted now.

“She did her best. She tried her best. And that is the most you can ask of her.”

Edelgard came back to the stone and stood in front of Caladria. “Let us go, child.”

Caladria hopped down, relieved she would not have to learn, at least that day, what creature had scampered across her skin. However, the dread of what awaited her with Edelgard outweighed any feelings of celebration.

“What do you say to Byleth?”

Caladria looked from one woman to the other, uncertain.

“What do you _say_ when someone opens the door for you?’ Edelgard reached out and pinched Caladria on the back of the arm, where Byleth wouldn’t see, to emphasize the words. It was always the little things like that, the actions other people didn’t see and the words other people didn’t hear. Never too much. Always just enough.

“Thank you,” Caladria told Byleth.

Byleth turned around and left them without another word.

Caladria took Edelgard’s hand and followed her up into the sunlight and then down an outdoor corridor to her bedroom. The smell of rain was heavy in the air all around them, and she breathed in deeply as she remembered dancing in the rain as a child. A chance glance at the sky revealed clouds rolling in, slowly gobbling up the light.

Caladria opened her door to her room and crossed to sit on the bed.

Edelgard stared at Caladria, her gaze completely unreadable. “I do thank you for today. I know that you tried your best.”

Caladria crossed her legs at the ankles and rested her hands in her lap, meeting Edelgard’s gaze directly. She had indeed tried her very best. “So can I have my bear?”

“May I.”

“May I have my bear?” Caladria bit the inside of her cheek where Edelgard wouldn’t see.

Edelgard produced the small brown bear from beneath her cape, the only piece of Caladria’s former life that still lived. “Where did you get this, child?”

“My mother gave it to me when I was little.” The words came out of Caladria’s mouth before she had a chance to give them thought and take them back.

“Your mother.”

Caladria could tell by the darkness that clouded Edelgard’s features that she’d said the wrong thing. She’d known, in fact, from the second the words left her lips. She wanted to close her eyes, fearing what was coming, but she feared just as much whatever would happen _should_ she show that fear.

“We have talked about this. Emotions are for the weak. We are not weak.”

Caladria told herself not to cry, focusing with all her strength on keeping her eyes dry.

“I haven’t told you fully, but there were sacrifices that I made. To be successful, for the greater good of my country. Things that I gave up. I cut the emotions out of myself and I was better for it. Everyone around me was.”

Trying not to look down at the bear in the older woman’s lap, Caladria looked out the window instead at the clouds that had come so quickly. They held their tears, and so could she. Caladria wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. Her guard lowered, she gave the bear a single glance.

“You must give this up.” The bear’s head shook slightly on its shoulders as Edelgard lifted it and shook it in Caladria’s direction. “This is the past you leave behind, and you will be stronger for it.”

With a large degree of uncertainty, Caladria took the bear as Edelgard presented it to her.

“Get rid of it.”

Frantically, Caladria looked around the room. Get rid of it? It was the only thing she had left. There—she spotted the small wooden trash can beside the bed, and she dropped the bear inside. She could easily get it back before the servants came to take the trash out.

“No.”

Caladria’s heart sank. She had to do more, she had to…

“If you can’t get rid of it, I will.” Edelgard crossed the room and yanked the toy out of the bin.

Edelgard held the brown bear out to Caladria again, but Caladria couldn’t take it. She closed her eyes, only to hear a tearing sound and then a soft thump and the slam of the door. Counting to ten, Caladria opened her eyes and darted to the bin, only to find her beloved bear in pieces, stuffing spilling out where his head had been separated from his body. His brown fur was ragged and had torn so easily, leaving strings of thread that dangled and lost themselves in his innards.

On the floor, her legs crossed, Caladria quietly pulled the pieces from the trash. She could fix it, maybe, like she fixed everything. She could put it back together the way it was, and she’d hide the bear this time, where Edelgard would never…It was no use. Frustrated, failing to put the bear back together successfully, Caladria let the pieces fall back where Edelgard had so cruelly discarded them. But she didn’t cry. There was no place for that. Not anymore.

Back in bed, with the blankets pulled up to her chin, Caladria laid in wait for morning, when her mother would return. Through the window, she watched as the light disappeared completely and the storm released its tears.


	13. Hope

Year: 1194

When Caladria woke the next day, she was alone. She rose, intent upon looking out her bedroom window, before remembering that she wasn’t in her bedroom and might never be again. Remembering what she’d left there. In a twist of irony, Caladria realized she had really only done what Edelgard had raised her to do. She had stood up for people no one else would stand up for. She had been strong. She had done what needed to be done in order to pave a way for a new world where people would be free.

Edelgard had had some good ideas, for sure. But she didn’t implement them in the best or fairest of ways, thinking only of herself and her people rather than the entire world. Because, as Caladria was learning, there really was a world outside the Empire.

A knock on the door, but it didn’t swing open without invitation. The opposite of what Caladria was used to. “Yes?” Caladria called out quietly.

Bernadetta entered, Saoirse on her shoulder. The tiny dragon flew over to Caladria and promptly nestled on top of the blanket across her lap. “G-good morning.”

The now open door let in some of the light Caladria had been missing. “Good morning,” she replied as she gently stroked the dragon.

“We having b-b-breakfast, if you would like to join us.”

Caladria couldn’t remember her last actual sit down meal, and she was indeed very hungry. “I…Thank you. Let me just get dr….” She realized even as the words left her mouth that she had nothing to change into.

“I l-left you some clothes,” Bernadetta pointed to the corner table, where there was indeed a small pile of clothes. “I had to guess but I th-think they should b-be your size?”

Crossing the room with Saoirse on her shoulder, Caladria rubbed the soft fabric between her fingers uncertainly. Did the older woman expect her to just change right here?

Realizing her faux-pas, Bernadetta practically leapt backwards. “I-I, I’ll just w-wait outside! And then show you to b-b-breakfast!”

Caladria opened her mouth to apologize, even though she wasn’t sure what for exactly, but Bernadetta was already gone, the door slamming shut behind her. She turned the knob of the stone sink in the corner, and the water that flooded out was ice cold on the skin on her hands. Vanilla and some other unidentifiable scent wafted up from the bar of soap, and Caladria gave her hands a good scrub, and then ran the soap over as much exposed skin as she could. It wasn’t a shower, exactly, but it was better than nothing.

The clothes were indeed soft, softer than the normal armors and capes and various apparel that Caladria had had to contend with in her younger years. They felt almost too nice, and as she slipped the shirt over her head, she found she wanted to roll up inside it and never come out. And Bernadetta had brought pants instead of a skirt, somehow knowing that skirts and dresses were not her style. Caladria pulled her boots on and tucked the pants inside, regretting that she would get the beautiful garments dirty but knowing that it was inevitable. Saoirse had fluttered back to the bed post when the water turn on, but she quickly drifted back when Caladria held out her hand and beckoned.

Bernadetta was pacing in the hallway when Caladria finally emerged. “Are they okay? D-do they fit?” She looked Caladria up and down. “They l-look okay! I wanted to m-make sure you had nice th-things. I’m sorry it’s just wool, I j-just—“

“They’re perfect.” Caladria ducked her head. “They’re more than I deserve, I think.”

“They’re s-so much less than you deserve.” Bernadetta gently touched Caladria’s arm and then steered her down the hallway. “This way. If we don’t hurry, Di-Dimitri may eat everything.”

The room they used for dining was huge. Caladria craned her neck as they went through the stone archway, noting how the greenery somehow stretched across the ceiling here as well. It reminded her of their garden room, and it somehow felt like home in a way hers never had. The Empire was sterile, dull. This place, this sanctuary set deep in stone beneath the ground, was more alive than should have ever been possible.

People clustered around the table, some familiar now to Caladria and others still not. Seteth. Flayn. Dimitri was there, at the far corner of the table, but there, and he did indeed have a heaping plate of food.

“He’s…eating with us.” Bernadetta leaned close to say the words in Caladria’s ear as if they were a secret.

“Doesn’t he normally?”

“He gets his food and takes it back to his room to eat alone. Says it’s what he de-deserves….” Her voice trailed off at the end of the sentence.

Dimitri noticed them as Caladria loaded her own plate of breakfast treasures, and he glanced down at the seat that was left empty beside him. It wasn’t much by way of invitation, but Caladria hefted her plate and edged around the room to sit beside him, perched hesitantly on the chair.

“Good morning.”

He had waited to speak until her fork was already in her mouth. Caladria struggled to chew and swallow and force out a “Good morning,” before she took too long and he thought her rude.

He let her take several bites before continuing. “I—“

At the same time Caladria said, “I wanted—“

Dimitri lowered his fork to his plate and leaned in closer. “I…am sorry I wasn’t there when you awoke. I’m not used to…spending so much time out of my room.”

Caladria nodded, shoveling more food into her mouth so that she wouldn’t have to rely when she wasn’t certain what to say. Besides, she didn’t need anyone there when she woke up. She was quite used to being alone.

“I haven’t told them. The things I told you.”

When Dimitri met her gaze, Caladria realized he was asking for her silence. Despite the fact that she was pretty sure, even young as she was, that everyone knew all was not well with him, she nodded again anyway. “I haven’t told anyone I hear…her….either.”

“I would like to get to know you better. If you’d like…There are so many things I wish had been different.”

“I would like that very much.” Caladria’s brain veered dangerously between overeager and terrified, but she knew that getting to know Dimitri, even a little, was something she did indeed want.

Bernadetta reached over to get Caladria’s attention. “Se-Seteth has told us some things about his time within the E-Empire, and we were hoping that you could answer a f-few questions, if you’re feeling up for it.” The hand holding her fork shook slightly as Bernadetta tried to spit out the words.

“I…can try?”

Seteth put down his fork, finished with his own breakfast, and tented his fingers as he leaned across the large table towards her. “What do you understand of why I was being held by the Empire, child?”

_Everything_ , Caladria thought. _More than probably even you understand._ But she knew better than to say that to an adult. “Your crime was hope,” she said quite simply. “You gave the people hope that there could be something else, and my mother believed that there could be nothing outside of her path. It was easier for her to eliminate you than to face the idea that she could be wrong.”

“Edelgard was _never_ wrong.” Seteth’s spit flickered with venom, but then softened as he said, “But hope…I more thought Flayn the type the people would look to, approachable as she is.”

“She, Edelgard I mean, thought that by capturing you she’d end you both.”

Beside Seteth, Flayn was quiet as a baby fawn. 

Caladria glanced from Seteth to Flayn. “She said you were brother and sister, but that isn’t true, is it?”

Flayn laughed then, a light tinkling sound that glittered across the table. “No, no it is not.”

“We said that so that Flayn could be with me, at the monastery, without arousing suspicion of our true age amongst the students. Which is…older than we appear.” Seteth took a sip of water to hide what appeared to be a near-grin.

“Are you calling me old, Father?” Flayn shoved a too-large chunk of fish taco into her mouth.

“I would never, Daughter.” Then to Caladria he said, “But back to the task at hand. What did the false Emperor hope to gain with my assassination?”

“The way I understand it, when the Archbishop was killed, you were what remained of the church leadership. My mother thought she had slaughtered you all, but then you re-emerged, and she could not stand that. Your spirits were something to be extinguished. It was almost…a game to her. Keeping down the Church of Seiros. That was what winning was to her. No matter what it cost any of us.”

“And what of Byleth? The professor?” Seteth pursed his lips. “Will she keep up the crusade and fight in Edelgard’s place?”

Caladria closed her eyes, remembering the good moments with Byleth, the times the woman had advocated for her, tried to make things better. The way she had allowed Caladria and Seteth to escape the Empire while demanding Caladria’s protection along the way. “It isn’t Byleth you need to be concerned with. It’s the people. They’ve gone along with these ideals for so long that it will difficult for them to change. They will try to rise up in her absence and continue her mission even if none of them understand fully what it is. Even though she never cared about any of them.”

Dimitri pointed around the fork that was halfway into his mouth to indicate his eye patch. “She cared not for any of us. Look what she did to Bernadetta. To me. She mowed down everyone in her path and somehow her need to end those who slither in the dark got tied to ending the Church and anyone who spoke out against her.” The fork clattered as he dropped it on the plate with no fanfare, and his eye flashed with a glint that almost made Caladria uncomfortable as he whispered, “She deserved everything that she received.”

Caladria set down her fork, reaching up to pet Saoirse on her shoulder. “I wanted my people to be free. I wanted them to have choices. _I_ wanted choices. Am I not…the same? I killed her because I didn’t—I didn’t have choices…“

“NO!” Dimitri dropped his fork with such force that his plate shook. “No,” he repeated, more gently the second time. “She deserved ev—“

“But I—“

“Your motives were not the same, child.” Seteth’s eyes looked upon her with more kindness than Caladria had seen from him prior as he cut them both off. “Where your mother killed to further her own agenda, you killed to further the agenda of your people. And really, of all people. You were thinking of the larger picture, not just your own desires. Edelgard would have brought about the end of the world if it suited her whims.”

“We didn’t want the world she wanted, so she deemed we no longer had a place. And there are so many of us,” Bernadetta paused for a breath, unusually confident in her words, “who feel that way. Even beyond those of us who managed to gather here. But many have stayed silent, for fear that they’d end up like…” Her voice trailed off as she looked at Dimitri, and then at Seteth. “People feared it would not end well for them. B-but we held hope. Not even in the Church, ne-ne-necessarily, but in a better life, not under the thumb of the Empire.”

“I fear that even with my mother gone, this won’t really end. The people need to be made to understand. They need to see that what she’s fed them all this time is not true, that what she has claimed evil is, in fact, the opposite.” Caladria held out her palm for Saoirse to jump down into, and then reached to stroke her as the others all stared her way. “And I don’t know how to do that, but I think that…I _know_ that we have to try.”

Bernadetta looked at the tiny purple dragon in Caladria’s hand. “I th-think that we might have a way.”

“Bernie…” It was clear from Flayn’s tone that she understood something in Bernadetta’s speech that Caladria did not.

Caladria frowned, looked down at the dragon, and then back at the rest of the table. “You cannot possibly think this little dragon could be of use?” Cupping Saoirse with her free hand, she lowered the dragon down into her lap.

“Oh, no, sweetheart, you misunderstand.” Flayn looked into her lap with more gravity than Caladria had yet seen her face hold. “

“Flayn—“ Seteth began.

“Seteth, I believe that we can trust her. More than I have allowed myself to believe in anything recently. She is my family.” Dimitri met Caladria’s eyes before staring directly at the other man.

“Very well. I think that Bernadetta speaks the truth—there is a way.” On his feet now, Seteth stepped away from the table. “But it must be shown to you. Not told. And we must be outside to do so. Follow.”

The others all rose and began to move after Seteth. Dimitri turned back to where Caladria still sat at the table. “Are you all right?”

She nodded as she slowly got to her feet. “It is difficult to imagine a way that we could change the minds of an entire empire. But it would have been impossible with her at the helm.”

“They need a capable leader. Someone who will bring about change in the right way. Someone who will not be afraid to make the tough choices, but also won’t be afraid to be wrong sometimes.” Dimitri cupped a hand on Caladria’s shoulder as they trailed several paces behind the others.

“They need you,” Caladria nodded in agreement.

“No, I have a kingdom already that I’ve let down, terribly. For a long time, I’ve given up. I’ve thought of revenge, and not my people. Only now am I starting to see…that there is perhaps more left to fight for.” They paused as up ahead, Seteth worked to open the door to the outside. “What they need, someday, is someone like you.”

Caladria looked at the dirt floor, unable to formulate an appropriate response.

“You will be more than capable, once you are grown. And you are already stronger than Edelgard ever was, that even I, because you accept all of the pieces of yourself. I wish that I could be more like that to my people. I let myself be too swallowed by emotion to do what was right for them, and I continue to be so. I’d like to make up for that now, but I’m not sure I can.”

Still unsure what to say, Caladria nodded instead, dimly aware of the tears that clouded her vision. It was the first time she could recall where it was okay to for her to cry. No one was going to tell her no. She thought back to Bernadetta’s words, to Dimitri’s, regarding what she deserved. And she reached up to swipe the tears away before they became too much. Caladria walked ahead of Dimitrito where the other three waited in the midst of a large break in the trees.

“So the people need hope. They need to see good over evil.” Flayn spun around in a small circle in the enormous clearing, her long sleeves twirling in the breeze she created. The early morning light leaked through the trees in small streams that made her green hair almost sparkle. Seteth looked around suspiciously, as if checking for intruders, but then stepped into the middle of the clearly with Flayn. “What gives more hope than the revival of a somewhat forgotten race?”

They nodded to each other, and then clasped hands.

And with that, the pair began to transform.


End file.
